POST #300 - WOW. So what vacuum did I buy?

Well, about a month ago, Brandi and I went down to the Oreck store and tried them out. It was a really tough call for me. I had been looking at the all surface Dyson and the Oreck, fully expecting to HATE whichever one I bought. I also called a company that does retro-fits on central vacs... for a big fat wad of cash.

So, we went to the Oreck store and looked at them. I had spent most of the day checking out the Dysons and just really didn't like the whole bagless thing. I don't know. I just have really bad allergies and I hate the whole filter thing on the bagless I already had and... basically I just hate the concept. I want the stuff safe and secure and far away from me. The only thing worse than vacuuming, is vacuuming the same stuff up again!

We checked out the different models they had and tried them out on the carpet and the hard floors. We even let Hunter and Jacob have a go at it. I was underwhelmed by both models we tried, but ended up going for the XL21 and the salesmen upgraded us to the Ironman (minivac that comes with it).

I took them home and tried them out and at first glance, did not hate either one. This was a good sign. The little Ironman sucks like crazy and has been doing a really good job on the tile. The Oreck really brings up the nap on the carpet, and while I still hate my carpet, it looks as good as it can look and I could move quickly through the entire house because it's really lite. I wasn't certain that the Oreck was really picking up that much or just fluffing up my carpet. But, I noticed that it was getting less easy to push around, so I thought I would check the bag. It was REALLY tightly packed at the very bottom and getting pretty full. So, being the geek I am, I weighed the vacuum. Standard this vac is about 9lbs. It weighed 14 now. Serious? Wow. I was pretty excited about that. The bag was pretty full and like I said, very densely packed. I even took it over to Brandi and she was equally impressed (or at least acted like it to humor her geek of a house cleaning husband).

So, I'm on my second bag, which took about a month to fill the first. I figure this one will take a bit longer since I think my carpets are cleaner now. I'm REALLY digging the Ironman, it makes the tile a lot easier. Basically I have moved from not hating the vacuums to actually kind of digging both of them.

Go Oreck!